


Among Queen

by nothingelsematters



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Chaos Ensues, Gen, Queen Plays Among Us, adam seeks approval, brian overthinks it of course, what is this, wherein the game with colourful bean astronauts is taken way too seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27589838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingelsematters/pseuds/nothingelsematters
Summary: When Adam is the first to die, Brian's brain starts gnawing on fear.When the next murders are those of their touring bassist and second drummer, he worries he's right...or is he?Could the impostor be someone showing his disapproval?Or is Brian imagining things?*Queen (and Queen+) plays Among Us. It goes as chaotically as you'd expect.
Comments: 20
Kudos: 36





	Among Queen

**Author's Note:**

> I can offer no explanation for the fact that after literal goddamn months of NOTHING, this was written in forty-five minutes.
> 
> I am still plugging away at the ending of Calling All Boys. And a NaNoWriMo project, which I unfortunately lost a few thousand words of when my Word decided to randomly update?
> 
> Anyway, I have spent an unholy amount of time in the last couple of months playing Among Us, and for some reason tonight, the idea of Queen playing Among Us just would not budge from my mind and came out in the form of word vomit.

Brian tentatively settled himself in his office chair and double-checked the instructions again. The black screen, with stars and colourful things floating around, came up and he typed the code he’d been sent in.

With a metallic noise, his character appeared in the loading bay of a spaceship. A little red astronaut, with fluffy wolf’s ears (they hadn’t had fox ears), with the label _RedSpecial_ floating above its head.

“Brian!” Adam’s voice echoed from his headphones. “You made it!” In the loading bay, the purple character wearing a crown and labelled _Starchild_ ran backwards and forwards excitedly.

“Yes,” Brian answered a little nervously, after first checking the Discord to make sure he was unmuted. (His daughter, bless her, had taught him how use both programs at once.)

He could hear Anita’s giggles from down the hall (his research had told him that two players in the same room was highly improper etiquette for this game) and suddenly the metallic noise sounded again and a little yellow astronaut with a plant growing out of its head appeared, tagged _AnitaD_.

“We’re just waiting on the others,” Tyler said cheerfully as his little black astronaut appeared in the room. “They should be here any tick of the tock.” _Drummy_ went through a series of rapid hat changes before settling on a balloon.

Brian was still nervous. He knew it was just supposed to be fun, when the code for the game and instructions on how to join the Discord server appeared in the group chat, yet he was still worried about looking a fool. Wasn’t this game for kids?

Still, he’d dutifully downloaded them, knowing he missed the others in this new lockdown, and had secretly practiced in some public games the night before (with a much better moniker than _RedSpecial_ ; no, he’d called himself _Zodiac_ the night before). He thought he had a little bit of an idea how to play.

More metallic noises drew his attention to the screen; the cyan astronaut with scuba goggles was tagged _DrumGod_ so could only be Roger; the white astronaut with the cherry hat named _TattooLady_ was Sarina, and the arrival of the brown astronaut with the viking helmet labelled _BassGui_ was accompanied by Neil’s enthusiastic voice greeting everyone over the Discord. The lime character with horns labelled _Spikney_ took them to eight players.

It had been Adam’s idea, and Tyler had set them up technically; Brian began to relax as he listened to the jumble of happy, familiar voices.

And then two more characters popped into the lobby.

A pink astronaut, with a flower hat, named _MrsSpark_.

And a green astronaut, with no hat at all, simply labelled _BackChat._

Brian stared at them. The appearance of the first character he could guess, but the second left no room for other interpretation. It had to be – but it couldn’t be –

“Shall we start?” Adam asked, but Brian quickly noticed his usual bright tone was quieter, more anxious.

A countdown timer appeared on the screen, as if in answer to Adam’s question, and Brian quickly readied his hand on the keys.

CREWMATE

THERE ARE 2 IMPOSTORS AMONG US

Checking he was muted (something he had also learned from his research last night), he looked at the task list. _Admin: Swipe Card_. Well, that was doable. He began to steer his astronaut down to admin, and settled in to the game.

It was while he was connecting wires that the words BODY REPORTED flashed up on his screen, and when the voting panel came up, he saw that Adam was dead. Tyler had found him. Quicky, Brian unmuted himself.

“Where was he?”

“He was in electrical,” Tyler replied. “I ran in from storage. There was no one else in there.”

“Where was everybody?” Roger asked. “I was in medbay.”

“I was also in medbay,” Neil added quickly, “I saw Rog in there.”

Slowly, different locations came in. Brian wondered how they were supposed to tell.

“Okay,” Tyler said cautiously, “that leaves everyone except pink and green. Where were you two?”

Dead silence, which felt like an eternity to Brian. And then he heard the answer that felt like a punch in the gut and a lightning bolt of joy, all at once.

“I was in the reactor,” John’s quiet voice came across the call. “And Ronnie was with me.”

“Yes, I was,” and Brian jumped that time, because if he hadn’t heard John’s voice in years, he hadn’t heard Ronnie’s in even longer.

“Okay. I guess we can skip,” Tyler mused.

“Yeah. Best way to go,” Sarina agreed. “We don’t have enough clues.”

NO-ONE WAS EJECTED (SKIPPED)

Brian began to make his little character run again, his heart pounding. John and Ronnie were in their game! In their chat! In their call! After all this time, John had joined an activity. Not just with him and Roger, or even him and Roger and Spike, but with the Plus group – with Neil, his own replacement! – and with Tyler…and with Adam.

A thought popped into his mind. John had joined, and Adam had been the first one to die. Was that a clue…?

“You’re overthinking this, Brian Harold May,” he scolded himself, and heard a muffled giggle and then Sarina’s voice quickly chiming in with “you’re not muted, Bri!”

Mortified, Brian muted himself and quickly returned to his tasks. The loud blaring siren of a sabotage nearly made him jump out of his chair again, and then, as he ran down a corridor, he came across half of a brown body. It took him a moment to hit the report button.

“Where was it?” Roger asked, and to Brian’s shock, when the screen came up, Tyler and Spike were also dead.

Whoever was impostor was very, _very_ good.

“Um, near the oxygen room,” Brian said. “I went to fix the sabotage and it was there.”

And then a second realization hit Brian.

_The killer was one of them._

All of the Plus crew were dead. The killer had to be one of Anita, Roger, Sarina, John or Ronnie.

 _It’s the Plus crew that died first_ …

Anita was cataloguing locations. Roger had been in Admin fixing the lower task, Sarina running up from shields. John had been in security, watching the cameras; he had seen nothing. Ronnie had been in electrical.

There seemed to be no obvious solution, so it was agreed to skip.

Yet it nagged at Brian. It was just a coincidence, surely.

He ran his little character towards navigation. As he was charting the course, he saw a flash of green out of the corner of the screen –

And suddenly, to his horror, the screen filled with a little animation of the green astronaut drawing a gun and shooting him in the head.

John.

John was the killer, and John had killed him.

He’d been right. Oh god, he’d been right. Adam the first one to die? The Plus crew all gone first? Now him?

Had John joined their game just to make his feelings clear?

Bringing himself back to the present, Brian realised he’d turned into a ghost. With some experimentation, he realised that meant he could fly through walls. Curious, he began to explore the ship.

The screen went black.

DEFEAT.

The sounds of gasps and screeches filled his ears as everyone finally unmuted. Amidst the cacophony of noise, it was made clear that the impostors had been John – and Ronnie.

And as the conversation unfolded, Brian realised that it had been Ronnie doing most of the killing. All of the kills had seemed opportunistic; they had been near vents, or caught them alone, or sabotaged the opposite end of the ship and killed them as they ran. It hadn’t been deliberate, after all.

 _You’ve got to watch the quiet ones_.

Well, he’d never have suspected it. He supposed that that was the point of the game, really. You were supposed to be good at hiding that you were the killer. _A bit unsettling, really_.

Brian realised he hadn’t heard Adam’s voice in several minutes as they all rejoined the lobby. There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Adam said softly, “Good game!”

And John – to Brian’s utter shock and delight – _laughed_.

“I’m so sorry to have killed you first, Adam,” John said, his tone still echoing the laughter. “I really didn’t want to. But you were standing _right_ above the vent, and it was just too good an opportunity to miss.”

Another beat of silence, and then Adam laughed too, a little nervously, but warming as he spoke. “I was in the middle of my download, and I had to start again!”

“Oh, I know,” and now Brian could _hear_ John’s smile. “I knew you couldn’t see me jump out of the vent.”

“How do you know how to vent kill?” Adam’s astonishment was clear, and now he was laughing too, properly.

“They’re experts!” Tyler protested. “Ronnie killed me and vented away so quickly, she’s clearly done it before!”

“John always was the most internet-savvy of us all,” Roger said suspiciously.

Brian felt warmth spread through him as Ronnie laughed too.

“This isn’t our first rodeo,” she teased.

“Who do you play with normally?” Spike shouted.

“Oh, dear,” John cackled. “You guys underestimate how crazy a _Deacon_ lobby can get! When I got the message, I was relieved to be playing with a bunch of less-experienced players!”

“You can’t imagine how we laughed when we realised we were both impostors,” Ronnie added. “We knew nobody would suspect us.”

“I did,” Brian said, and there was dead silence.

“How?” John asked, at the same time Sarina said, “why didn’t you say so?”

“I thought I was overthinking it,” Brian admitted. He hesitated, and then added, “it was just – Adam was the first one to die, and then all the Plus guys…”

_Why did you say that? We’d finally gotten relaxed!_

Then John’s chuckle sounded again, but soft and warm and his tone was fond. It was like being wrapped in a warm familiar blanket, a gentle quiet folding into the family he loved.

“Bri, my dear, you do overthink things. With a little more practice at this game, you could be the most deadly of us all.”

There was silence again, but this time it was warm and comfortable.

Then Roger said, “Well, let’s play again.”

The countdown timer began again, and Adam shouted indignantly, “If I am the impostor, _you’re dying first, John!_ ”

The last thing Brian heard before the mute buttons all clicked in was John’s genuinely happy laughter.

And then his smile faded.

IMPOSTOR

Oh, dear.

END

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not making any promises, but I really, really hope to have Calling All Boys finished before the end of the year and headway in my NaNoWriMo project, which is a long-standing fic I've longed to write for some time.
> 
> Sorry for continually disappearing :(


End file.
